The world is full of dangers for a falcon less than six weeks old learning to fly, even though it is one of the fastest species on the planet.
This week, three baby falcons named Hugo, Polo and Estebane began spreading their wings around the nesting site located at 23e floor of the University of Montreal tower, while hundreds of online viewers watched their every move.
It’s an “exciting, but stressful” moment, says Ève Bélisle, who has been monitoring the falcons at the University of Montreal since 2007 and runs the Facebook and YouTube pages dedicated to them.
“We all want to see them fly,” she said in a telephone interview. “But it’s a little stressful because there’s always the risk of injury.”
Polo was the first falcon to take flight on Sunday, in an attempt that began with clumsy wingbeats that carried him safely to a lower roof. Hugo was even less graceful, slipping from the nest site on the tower and falling halfway to a lower perch.
Since females are larger than males and take longer to learn to fly, Estebane will likely spend a few more days exercising his wings before taking off.
Even if the falcons have landed safely, they will have to overcome many challenges before reaching adulthood, according to David Bird, professor emeritus of wildlife biology at McGill University. Mr Bird says around 50 per cent of hawk chicks don’t survive to their first birthday. Other estimates put the figure at two-thirds.
In an interview, he explained that the moment when hawks take flight – or learn to fly – is particularly dangerous, especially for urban birds. An inexperienced youngster may fly into a window, get caught in a gust of wind, or flap its wings to the ground, where it risks being run over by a car or attacked by a dog.
Survive in the city
Even if they survive to adulthood, they face other dangers, including competition with other hawks, pesticides and chemicals – including flame retardants used to put out fires. forest – and, recently, bird flu.
However, Mr Bird said there was no doubt the hawks were survivors. Widespread use of pesticides such as DDT and killings by humans decimated their numbers in the 1960s and 1970s. But in the decades since DDT was banned, recovery projects have been successful , so much so that hawks “went from near extinction in eastern North America to now, in the eyes of some, almost becoming a pest species,” he said, pointing out that some people don’t like seeing birds on the edges of their buildings.
Part of their success, Bird said, is their ability to adapt to cities, where tall high-rise buildings have replaced cliffs as nesting sites and a large population of pigeons provides plenty of prey.
Urban falcons, including those at the University of Montreal, have become somewhat of an ambassador to the public in recent years thanks to live-streamed nesting cameras.
Mme Bélisle helped install a nest box in 2008, where more than two dozen babies have hatched over the years. They are filmed 24 hours a day.
This year, hundreds of people watched every day as the little falcons hatched from their eggs, growing rapidly under the care of their parents. They were also able to see their white down replaced by elegant brown plumage.
However, observing the nest in real time is not for the faint of heart. On June 11, a fourth falcon, named Élyse, fell ill and died in the nest box before the eyes of spectators. The only baby born last year also died.
“It’s real life, and it can be sad sometimes,” admits Mme Bélisle. She said the hardest part of her job was comforting a member of the public in distress or answering numerous questions on Facebook or YouTube from people worried about the falcons’ health.
However, she believes that this concern shows that people have formed a real connection with nature and with birds.
“People feel connected to nature when they watch this. For someone who lives in the city and who doesn’t have much contact with nature, it’s like a window open to what happens in real life,” believes Ms. Bélisle.
Mme Bélisle emphasizes that she and the other volunteers will be on the ground for the next few days, ready to rescue the young falcons if they find themselves in difficulty. Then, Polo, Hugo and Estebane will spend a few weeks near the nest to learn how to hunt from their parents. Then they’ll fly away for good, or at least until they grow up and perhaps appear in a filmed nest somewhere.